Re: [Gdbheads] proposed change to GDB maintainership rules

[David Carlton]

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:01:45 -0500, Elena Zannoni <address@hidden> said:
> David Carlton writes:

>> I was about to ask the same thing.  Is there some sort of internal
>> Red Hat politics going on here?  If so, I would really appreciate
>> Andrew spelling out his view of that situation.  I would also like
>> to know where Daniel, Mark and I fit into Andrew's picture.

> Hmm, interesting question. You already should know the answer to it,
> because I have posted it in my initial message which was forwarded
> to this list.

> I wrote: "I also want to take the opportunity to make clear that I
> have no affiliation whatsoever with the Red Hat employees that
> fomented the discord. Together with Andrew Cagney and Jeff Johnston,
> I belong to a separate organization, with a completely disjoint
> reporting structure."

> From our activities on the gdb-patches mailing list, it should be
> pretty easy to pick up the pattern that Andrew, Jeff and I focus on
> GNU/Linux now. Looked at a RH gdb rpm recently?

Let's see.  No, I haven't looked at a RH gdb rpm recently, or ever.  I
wouldn't say that I've observed you, Andrew, and Jeff focusing more on
GNU/Linux than on other parts of GDB, but obviously I haven't been
paying attention closely enough.  (I have noticed Jeff doing the NPTL
patches, actually.  But is all of Andrew's frame work GNU/Linux
specific?)  I assume that the part of Red Hat that y'all belong to
somehow has less of a geneological connection with Cygnus than the
other part of Red Hat, even though all of you worked at Cygnus in the
past?

I still am confused.  (This is a sincere statement, not grandstanding
on my part.)  There are various splits here:

* People who work in your part of Red Hat, people who work in the
  other part of Red Hat, people who don't work at Red Hat at all.

* People who used to work for Cygnus, people who don't work for
  Cygnus.

It is the case that you and Andrew are both ex-Cygnus employees who
work for a certain division of Red Hat.  But I don't understand what
weight I, who have no affiliation with Red Hat or Cygnus, am supposed
to give to that datum.

It seems like Andrew (and you, I guess) are painting this as a
conspiracy for the other group of Red Hat (do these groups in Red Hat
have names?) to try to take over GDB somehow.  I don't understand how
you're reconciling that with the fact that four of the eight
signatories on our proposal have nothing to do with Red Hat, and that
neither Daniel or I has been particularly shy about complaining either
in the current discussion or in the thread on this issue in gdb@ last
year.  (Daniel started that thread, I seem to recall.)

If we want to complain about groups of people within corporations, I
would say that it is your group within Red Hat that is trying to block
a change with widespread support elsewhere in the active GDB
community.  I don't sincerely believe that you are trying to block
this for corporate interests or that you have anything other than the
best interests of GDB at heart; on the other hand, I also don't
believe that anybody else participating in this discussion has
anything other than the best interests of GDB at heart, either.

I repeat my questions:

>> Is there some sort of internal Red Hat politics going on here?

I am aware that Red Hat is divided into multiple groups.  I do not
know anything about the political implications of that division, or
even anything about the details of that division.

>> If so, I would really appreciate Andrew spelling out his view of
>> that situation.  I would also like to know where Daniel, Mark and I
>> fit into Andrew's picture.

I still would like an answer to this.  If I'm supposed to be a dupe
for a secret Cygnus/Red Hat cabal, I would at least like to know
it. :-)

David Carlton
address@hidden